Report cites concerns with health care in rural Saskatchewan

Suzanne Kuchinka, mayor of the village of Macoun in southeast Saskatchewan, says it’s been a struggle for years to keep family doctors because they retire or move elsewhere.

In Lloydminster, a city on the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary, Mayor Gerald Aalbers says doctors who want to work in his community are facing roadblocks.

These are some of the health-care issues facing small Saskatchewan towns.

A report released this month cited hundreds of service disruptions over four years due to staffing shortages along with morale issues among workers.

“We’re dying for doctors,” Kuchinka said recently in Regina at an annual meeting of municipal mayors and councillors.

Aalbers said he knows a Lloydminster woman who’s internationally trained to be a doctor but is unable to enrol in a Saskatchewan program that would help her practise in the city.

She’s now moving to New Brunswick to work, he said.

“It’s a real challenge. I’d love to see how we can recruit more doctors to our communities and maintain the ones we have,” Aalbers said.

The Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit at the University of Regina released the report looking at the state of rural health care in the province.

The team went through government and media reports, interviewed workers and held group discussions in a large virtual event.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 5430 funded the project, though the report says the union did not direct or design the research.

Project lead Nuelle Novik, an associate professor at the university, said the team counted 533 service disruptions from August 2019 to

July 2023 in rural regions with union staff. Those included temporary closures of a hospital or reduced hours.

It means patients drove further away for care, said Novik. And when they got to a larger city with services, they were also waiting longer.

“This is something we should all be concerned about,” Novik said.

“Those folks in rural communities are finding themselves in those urban centres, which is increasing the demands on those particular systems.”

Two years ago, Kuchinka said, she had to go to Regina to give birth to her child, because the hospital in nearby Estevan could not offer the service.

“It’s kind of crazy,” she said.

The report says 49 per cent of the province’s doctors were internationally trained in 2022 and many often leave rural communities.

Kuchinka said the province needs to get into local high schools and encourage students to work in medicine. It could consider offering tuition relief, she said.

“Many of these internationally trained doctors use smaller communities as stepping stones,” she said.

Novik’s research also found low morale among those who work in rural health care.

Saskatchewan has been hiring more contract nurses from out of province to help fill positions. But they are often paid more.

Last week, nurses in Saskatoon wrote in a letter to provincial Health Minister Everett Hindley about how pay disparity is creating problems. Out-of-province nurses also get first priority for shifts due to contractual obligations, it says.

“We are in crisis. Please listen to our voices,” says the